Department of Psychology, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland, United States of America.
PLoS One. 2013 May 28;8(5):e64673. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0064673. Print 2013.
Neurons in the ventral striatum (VS) fire to cues that predict differently valued rewards. It is unclear whether this activity represents the value associated with the expected reward or the level of motivation induced by reward anticipation. To distinguish between the two, we trained rats on a task in which we varied value independently from motivation by manipulating the size of the reward expected on correct trials and the threat of punishment expected upon errors. We found that separate populations of neurons in VS encode expected value and motivation.
腹侧纹状体（VS）中的神经元会对预测不同价值奖励的线索进行反应。目前尚不清楚这种活动是代表与预期奖励相关的价值，还是由奖励预期引起的动机水平。为了区分两者，我们在一项任务中对大鼠进行了训练，通过改变正确试验中预期奖励的大小和错误时预期的惩罚威胁，从而独立于动机来操纵价值。我们发现，VS 中的神经元群体分别编码预期价值和动机。
